that I’ve been short-changing you on the “jokes” front lately. During the week I found

the self-described

“number one source of sheep related puns on the internet”, so here we go.

Now, a shepherd likes a quiet night.

When none of the sheep

need to be ushered back into the paddock.

At night, no ewes is good ewes.

If one does escape,

the shepherd will go and bring it back.

When it’s dark, that’s known as re-ewe-nighting.

Being so dark, some have suggested

re-ewe-nighting-lighting,

by using more rural lamb posts.

A “lamb post”, of course,

could be thought of in rambassadorial terms,

a sheep sent to the Ewe Ian (UN).

“Ian” is a very unusual name to give to a ewe, but still…

Sheep who have the opportunity to travel,

as North Otago’s history will attest,

prefer to do so by sea.

And of course,

they like to make sure everything is absolutely sheep shape.

I’ve got them all here, “The Wolf of Wool St”,

“Sheep of fools”, “woolly jumpers”,

“The Shaun Identity”

they start to get pretty weak after that.

You’ve made it this far, no doubt, by shear determination.

Well, the fourth Sunday in Easter each year

presents us with sheepy imagery.

This year, we have a glimpse of Jesus as Shepherd,

and by virtue of that,

the ancient image that we are somehow sheep-like.

But also that unique image of Jesus as the Gate.

Throughout John’s Gospel,

Jesus makes a series of profound “I am” statements.

The whole “I am” idea itself

points us back to the burning bush,

and Moses being told God’s name, “I am who I am”.

But Jesus chooses to reveal who he is to us

in these statements:

I am the living water

I am the bread of life

I am the Resurrection and the life, and others.

But this morning “I am the gate for the sheep.”

I don’t know about you, but the idea of a gate

doesn’t quite have the same poetry or profundity

as some of the other “I am” statements Jesus makes.

We know about gates.

They’re functional.

A bit rusty sometimes.

Some take more effort to shift or to shut

than they rightly deserve.

But Jesus isn’t comparing himself

to a farm gate as we know it,

he’s talking to farming people

who know about a different scale of stock to us,

where you know each one of the animals, by name,

and by names more meaningful than “Mint Sauce”.

Where the flock and the shepherd were an odd sort of family.

And the shepherd was, quite literally, the gate.

At night, when the flock was gathered up,

it was pastured somewhere safe,

where wolves and thieves couldn’t pick them off.

And the shepherd made his bed across the entrance,

so if you wanted to get out or some sort of predator

wanted to get in, the shepherd would know about it.

That’s the image Jesus uses.

“I am the gate for the sheep”.

Protection. Knowledge. Care. If we’re sheep,

and that’s the image the Bible uses for us, often,

we are offered a place where we can be safe,

and if we stray or if predators come near,

we’re told that Jesus

is in that place of encounter or danger with us.

God in Jesus our Shepherd is with us in all these things.

Beside still waters,

in the valley of the shadow of death,

in the presence of our foes,

in Christ Jesus, God is there. The gate.

Making it meaningful, making it bearable, making it holy.

Illuminating all of it with resurrection light.

Like last week on the road to Emmaus,

Jesus is alongside us.

When all seems dark and done-with,

Jesus opens the gate of glory.

We are an Easter people.

We are standing in resurrection light today,

but in a very real sense

we’re still dealing with the valley of the shadow of death.

Jesus the Shepherd, the Gate

is there to make sure nothing fearful interrupts

our going out and our coming in.

There’s nothing unreliable or mis-hanging about this gate,

and we can trust for ourselves

and for those we place in God’s hands

that the pathway to God’s eternity

and the gate to God’s glory and light and love

is held open for us by the Saviour who has journeyed through all pain and passion to declare emphatically

that God-is-with-us, Emmanuel,

and that as he lives, we shall too.

The sheep of his flock, the people of his pasture.

Life, and in abundance. Today, and into eternity.

]]>https://unfamiliarname.wordpress.com/2014/05/09/homily-for-easter-4a-2/feed/0Fr Tim HurdEaster 2Ahttps://unfamiliarname.wordpress.com/2014/05/02/easter-2a/
https://unfamiliarname.wordpress.com/2014/05/02/easter-2a/#respondFri, 02 May 2014 10:41:20 +0000http://unfamiliarname.wordpress.com/?p=431]]>These things did Thomas count as real:
the warmth of blood, the chill of steel,
the grain of wood, the heft of stone,
the last frail twitch of flesh and bone.

The vision of his skeptic mind
was keen enough to make him blind
to any unexpected act
too large for his small world of fact.

His reasoned certainties denied
that one could live when one had died,
until his fingers read like Braille
the markings of the spear and nail.

May we, O God, by grace believe
And thus the risen Christ receive,
whose raw, imprinted palms reach out –
and beckoned Thomas from his doubt.

Words by US poet and Professor Thomas Troeger.

His namesake – Thomas, Doubting Thomas,

is with us every Low Sunday.

He claims a space for us and those moments

when we wonder if last Sunday really happened.

When it seems just too hard to believe,

to set aside the perverse, reliable, comfort of hurt

or sheer rock solid refusal

to trust what someone else is saying.

Thomas missed the boat last week,

absent when the Risen Lord appeared that evening,

suddenly there in the midst of gathered, frightened disciples,

themselves apparently unconvinced

by Mary Magdalene’s testimony and Easter morning encounter.

Thomas missed that moment, and wasn’t going to have

a bar of this belief in something he could not touch.

Not even willing to engage in any sort of meaning

beyond the tactile, flesh and blood of reality.

Perhaps a bit like the slightly joyless – it seemed to me –

woman I heard interviewed on the radio this week,

who writes books for children

debunking fairytales from a scientific perspective.

Now it’s a week later, for Thomas and for us,

the first day of the week,

and now also the mystical eighth day,

the Lord’s Day, the day of new creation, new life.

Thomas is there this time when Jesus stands in the disciples’ midst. And Jesus takes him at his word.

Touch, he says. See. Reach out.

Do not doubt but believe.

And it turns out Thomas doesn’t need to touch.

Not in a literal sense.

He needs to know.

To know for himself.

To let go of the narrative he’s drawn over Jesus’ last days:

You might remember that he says to the disciples

that in going to Lazarus at Bethany, they will die with him.

And now Thomas needs to write a new chapter

to the story of death and darkness,

the fate he was so sure was theirs.

The world as he saw it has indeed died.

And a new life, new possibilities

replace the implacable rock of doubt and death.

From this moment of recognition,

of faith and belief reborn,

comes the most profound and complete statement

of trusting faith we have in all the Gospels,

words that from Thomas,

the outsider to news of the Resurrection,

become the testimony of the whole Church:

“My Lord and my God!”

How often do we stand with Thomas,

imagining our story’s stuck?

Our new beginnings over with?

Too hurt, or grief-stricken or tired or intransigent

to let things be different.

To believe Good News.

To change, to let go of the safety of a well-nursed doubt,

or a past slight, or the harsh judgement of self and sin.

James K. Baxter writes of his own journey,

Love is the answer to the dark voices

Of the demons that trouble us when youth has gone,

Saying, “You fool, you have had your day

And wasted it.” The spirit of a spring morning

When the wind moves gently over the grass

Is enough to tell us that the stone at the door of the tomb

has been lifted.

Alleluia. Adonai.

It seems to me that Thomas takes a week

to roll the rock of all of that away

from his understanding of the tomb.

It seems of profound importance too

that Jesus knows Thomas’ need to come to terms

with what has been so wounded and so broken on the cross.

What was such weakness is now glorious victory.

What was shattered is remade and redemptive.

Now transformed, the wounds of love on Jesus’

hands and side are not denied by Jesus’ resurrection.

They are real, and they are what a God

who chooses to be one with us,

to wear our flesh and blood, carries

in Christ risen from the dead

as emblems of that love, its cost, and of its triumph.

Jean Vanier, founder of the L’Arche communities worldwide

for people with intellectual disabilities, writes:

Jesus invites each one of us, through Thomas,
to touch not only his wounds,
but those wounds in others and in ourselves,
wounds that can make us hate others and ourselves
and can be a sign of separation and division.
These wounds will be transformed into a sign of forgiveness
through the love of Jesus
and will bring people together in love.
These wounds reveal that we need each other.
These wounds become the place of mutual compassion,
of indwelling and of thanksgiving.

We, too, will show our wounds when we are with him in the kingdom, revealing our brokenness and the healing power of Jesus.

And it’s that oxymoron around leaving
that we share with the disciples this morning.

Jesus, conqueror of death and darkness,
takes his friends outside Jerusalem’s walls
forty days after that first bright Easter morning,
having repeatedly appeared to them
and spoken about his Kingdom,
– and there, instead of establishing a theocratic state,
as some of his disciples still seem to have expected,
he blesses them and leaves,
promising the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus’ Ascension is about his returning
to the God from whom he came,
about his physical being no longer being on earth,
in Palestine,
in time
and with all the limitations of human existence
– ethnicity, gender, language…
In fact, all those accounts
about disciples not recognising the Risen Christ
point us clearly to the realisation
that Christ is now not limited,
not contained, not entombed
by any one culture or ethnicity or family.
Nor in the Ascension
to any one time or region or language.

Jesus is taken into heaven,
whatever we understand that story to be telling us,

Jesus expands, the fullness of him who fills all in all,
to be present in and to the Church
beyond then and beyond now.

Jesus ascends, that we and those first Christians
might be freed from the limitations of his humanity,
his time and space,
that we might be his witnesses in every age,
in every language, every culture,
that we might be made ready to receive the Holy Spirit
which overcomes all those barriers of our expectation.
That sends us out “like sparks to set the world on fire”.

So, the Ascension is not about leaving, really.
Not about parting, but presence.Not about absence, but
“the fullness of him who fills all in all”.

Hear again those wonderful words of St Paul,
his prayer for the Church,
for you and I:I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Father of glory,
may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation
as you come to know him,
so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened,
you may know what is the hope
to which he has called you,
what are the riches
of his glorious inheritance among the saints,
and what is the immeasurable greatness
of his power for us who believe…

[God] has put all things under his feet
and has made him the head over all things
for the church, which is his body,
the fullness of him who fills all in all.

hat does that evocative phrase mean, do you think?
“The fullness of him who fills all in all”.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has suggested that,
as in the Ascension
Jesus carries our humanity into God’s very self,
we can understand
Jesus’ humanity taking into it
all the difficult, resistant, unpleasant bits of our humanity,
taking them into the heart of love
where alone they can be healed and transfigured.

Paul talks about the Church as Christ’s Body,
his humanity,
a humanity that is affirmed in the Ascension,
but that is also still being transformed and redeemed
by our proclamation,
by our loving service,
by our giving voice to the voiceless,
by our prayer, and in the power of the Holy Spirit.
By our being the Body of Christ.

]]>https://unfamiliarname.wordpress.com/2011/06/07/homily-for-ascensiontide_11/feed/0Fr Tim HurdHomily for Easter 6Ahttps://unfamiliarname.wordpress.com/2011/05/31/homily-for-easter-6a/
https://unfamiliarname.wordpress.com/2011/05/31/homily-for-easter-6a/#respondMon, 30 May 2011 12:06:12 +0000http://unfamiliarname.wordpress.com/?p=419]]>The wide-eyed tourist has long been a figure of fun,
whether stereotyped with a big camera and bad English,
or the North American drawl and few ideas about how
we manage to live here on the edge of the world,
or the freedom-camping free-loader,
most often from Europe,
who has a comical accent for good measure.

St Paul is this morning a tourist,
something of an innocent abroad.
He wanders, wide-eyed, we might imagine,
around one of the greatest cities of his age.

The people of ancient Athens
were amongst the most civilised and sophisticated
people of their era.

Athens was the centre for a culture,
for much of the philosophy that underlies
even our world today,
a “great city”
and centre of intellectual, cultural
and religious prestige and influence.
Athenians were famous for being open
to theological and philosophical development,
or to put it slightly less kindly,
they were always on the lookout for a novelty..

They had a whole pantheon of gods on offer,
their own, and no doubt a few of the regional specialities
of outlying areas and powerful neighbours.
To keep all bases covered,
they also evidently had an altar
to any divinities they didn’t have knowledge of,
but whose good humour they sought to maintain.
Hence the altar to an unknown god.

Paul,
disturbed by the sheer number of idols on offer in Athens,
does see the glimmer of hope in this openness
to an unknown, unnamed God, the God
whom Paul declares is actually the only one true God,
maker of heaven and earth.

He goes on to talk about the difference
between his God and the idols he sees.
The latter are shaped and waited on by humans,
as if to be placated and managed
by what people wanted and hoped for.

The unknown universal God does not work that way.
God is not to be managed or manipulated
or served token offerings of food and drink.
The God who is, is to be honoured and worshiped
in the whole of one’s existence,
and in awe at the bounty of creation,
because this God is the source
and the sustaining force permeating all things.

Paul even quotes one of the Greek poets, Epimenidies:
‘In him we live and move and have our being’.

And so we come to our gathering,
our week-by-week focus for community and faith.
Holy Communion. A token offering of food and drink?

Of course the theology of what’s going on
is quite different,
we ourselves being nourished by the bread and wine,
blessed and made different, as we are through it,
but do we allow this Sacrament
to stand in place sometimes
of a real, living relationship with the real, living God?

Holy Communion, the Eucharist
has at its heart an intimate, incarnational mystery,
but do we ever move beyond this encounter
with the “unknown God”?

As St Paul tells those who will listen to him,
the one true God is not far off from each one of us,
has in fact created us to search after Godself,
and in Christ Jesus has known our flesh and blood,
that we might know God.
The God “in whom we live and move an have our being”.

Seven days a week, not just on a Sunday morning.
Every time we break bread with another,
not just in the Sacrament of Holy Communion.
As we pray, and read Scripture, and give thanks,
not just as consumers on a Sunday,
but as part of God’s creative work in the world,
each and every moment of our living.

We are coming towards the end of this Easter season,
and we might carry with us
the metaphor of a life un-entombed.
Of a God in Christ unable to be contained by mere rock and rational expectation of death’s dominance.
A God, not able to be managed,
not enshrined, not reserved for special occasions.
But “in whom we live and move an have our being”.

Joy Cowley writes,
Everything here is holy in its being
Every fern, tree, rock, drop of sea,
exists as a prayer of thanksgiving,
and together they speak a chapter
in the gospel of wonder
which is laid upon our lives.

We are called to recognise God in our lives and our world,
to grow and to ourselves bear fruit,
fruit that will nourish us and others,
that will bring life and strength, justice and joy to the world
and all its people. Amen.

Well, we’re still here.
You may have noticed
that the Rapture did not happen yesterday at 6pm, here or in any time zone.

The certain prediction of a US evangelist that it would
is just one of many that have come and gone over twenty centuries.
Harold Camping’s date was determined by his reading of biblical numerology – numbers and their use in the Bible.

Now, it’s not completely mad: numbers are very significant in Scripture.
Providentially, we have some significant numbers in our readings tonight,
which we can explore.

But of course there is a world of difference
between the symbolism of biblical numbers,
and thinking we can gain secret knowledge through them.

One is about the richness of the many layers of biblical meaning and poetry;
the other is almost a form of gnosticism, the idea that a chosen individual or few
have special, hidden, almost magical insight into the mind and will of God.
One is thoroughly in consonance with orthodox Christianity and biblical study;
the other very much a fringe cul-de-sac.

First, though, let’s just remind ourselves of,
and put in some sort of context, our readings.

Our passage from Zechariah
is a vision concerning the rebuilding of the Temple,
at a time when only some of the exiles had returned to Jerusalem.
The figure of Zerubbabel mentioned was of Judah’s kingly line,
a descendent of King David and ancestor of Jesus.
It was he who was to take the leading role in rebuilding the Temple,
clearing away the “great mountain” of rubble from the first Temple’s destruction,
and from “small things” building again the House of the Lord.

The prophet Zechariah’s vision is evocative of a restored Temple Sanctuary,
with its menorah, its lampstands, and even two olive trees to give fresh oil,
symbolising the restoration in Jerusalem
of both priestly and royal service.

The Book of Revelation has another vision, once again of Jerusalem.
Almost certainly written
after the destruction of Zerubbabel’s rebuilt Temple in the year 70AD,
this is a vision of a world remade, heaven and earth,
symbolised by Jerusalem, the holy city, coming down from heaven,
of the fulfilment of the Incarnation when God dwells fully with humanity.

In this vision, there is – if you read on – no need for a Temple, or for lampstands,
because the throne of God and the Lamb – the Risen Christ – are at its heart.

The Church, the bride of the Lamb, the spiritual new and forever holy Jerusalem,
is seen as a city beyond beauty and imagination, glinting like a jewel.

Seven is the number of days of Creation,
it represents completeness, wholeness, universality, the sabbath.
The Jewish menorah, lampstand, has seven candles to symbolise this,
to bring to mind enlightenment and the promise of God.

Twelve is the number of those God chooses, the people of God,
the twelve tribes of Israel, the twelve Apostles.

Other numbers are also significant:
The Lord your God is one God.

Three symbolises the Trinity,
but also in a number of places in Scripture, the day on which God acts.
This is demonstrated no more clearly than in the Resurrection,
when on the third day Christ rises from the dead.

40 is an important number, signifying as a round number a generation
or a period of time between “a few” and “a great many”.

More than this, both Hebrew and Greek gave letters numerical values,
A B C – aleph, beth, gimel, – alpha, beta, gamma
corresponding to 1, 2, 3 and so on.

In this way we get symbolic values, most famously 666,
the Book of Revelation’s “number of the beast”,
probably from adding together the value of letters from the Hebrew title of Nero,
first Emperor to persecute the Church,
and thus shorthand for every latter persecution.

So, numbers in the Bible are important, are meaningful,
but need not be limited to the literal.
They give us insight, often, into what is being evoked or intended.

I think I would want to suggest to those disappointed
by the non-appearance of the Rapture
that both, as Jesus tells us, “no-one knows the day or the hour”,
but also that Scripture’s inspired authors
were more often allegorical proclaimers, prophets, poets,
than – with the greatest of professional respect – accountants or quantity surveyors
(or, in Mr Camping’s case, civil engineers).

God give us eyes to see, ears to hear and wisdom to discern
the richness of the gift of Scripture.
And humility to let God speak.

Most of us have done it. The hassle, the upheaval.
I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that
more than one of us has probably
at some stage procrastinated,
put off taking on a new opportunity
simply because of that sheer inertia of being settled,
and the horror of moving house.

But do you remember the other side of it,
before the moving truck catches up with you?
Can you recapture the feeling
when you stood in a new room, yet to be furnished?
A world of space and possibility.

Do you remember, like I do,
running as a child from room to open room,
simply soaking up the space and wonder of it all?
A manic kitten in a new and vast open space?
A little vision of heaven?
A house with many dwelling places,
many nooks and crannies for a young heart to embrace.

“In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.”
But when we’re a little bit older,
when the reality of moving’s
not always something that fills you with enthusiasm,
that open room, that space can look a little different.
Daunting. Depressing.

A sign of work yet to be done, of corners to be filled,
shelves to be arranged
and boxes upon boxes to be unpacked.

An empty room from this perspective
isn’t always such a thing of joy and wonder.

And if our moving house
is part of our adjusting to new circumstances
– through changed employment, through retirement,
through ended relationships, through bereavement:
how much more can that be daunting and disheartening?
How much more are we aware
of the emptiness that confronts us?

We are still in the season of Easter.
Of new life and new possibilities and hope renewed and joy
and our identity rediscovered.
But how often do we find that, hard on the heels
of the Day of Resurrection,
we are roughly shaken back
by our encounters or emotions or experiences,
by disaster or disappointment or depression,
and it could be almost as if
that early morning at the empty tomb has yet to happen.

It is perfectly possible to find ourselves
somewhere that feels and looks a lot like Good Friday,
even as the Alleluias of our faith and life still ring in the air.

And that can make it all feel a bit hollow.
That can make us feel a bit hollow.

It can seem as though the new and empty rooms
of our elation, even the empty tomb itself,
have become the strangely hollow
disconnected world of some sort of after-Easter blues.

Where we just know we’ve heard the good news,
that we’ve got the picture, that we’ve travelled through
the mystery of Cross and Resurrection,
and we know that makes us different, but – well –
somehow it hasn’t made things around us different.
Thomas and Philip this morning speak for us in that place

Their words are before the Cross and Resurrection,
part of Jesus’ leaving,
but we hear them today knowing the Resurrection story,
part of our living as an Easter people.
“Lord, we do not know where you are going.
How can we know the way?”
“Show us the Father”

And the response we receive back is very simple:
“You know me. Believe me.”

“You know me. Believe me.”
The invitation to a mature and honest relationship.

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life”.
You may not think you know where you’re going,
but you do know me. Let that be enough.

That’s a pretty big ask.
Trusting God – trusting anyone – is a huge step
in the development of that relationship. It’s hard.

It’s much easier to ‘believe’
in an abstract concept called “God”
than to take the bungee jump of faith that Jesus suggests.
“Believe”, he says, “in God”.
But “believe also in me”,
the Word made flesh, dwelling among you.

“Believe” in this case, meaning “trust”.

Trust leaves us open to confronting
the clash between the worlds of our expectation
and our experience.
Trust means accepting
that we don’t always know where we’re going,
but we do paradoxically know the way.
That we’re open to what God might be doing in our lives.

Trust is such a fragile flower.
It will not bloom overnight.
This is a life’s work.
It is our life’s truth.
It is the way of the disciple.

Our way, our truth and our life
are caught up in developing
and deepening a trust in God.
A trust that can let us discern,
as we stand on the doorstep of each new dwelling place
– fully furnished or empty as anything –
a trust that can let us discern
how this place has been prepared for us,
and how we have been made ready for it,
and that, above all, we are not alone,
in our wonder or our despondency.

For wherever my journey to God takes me –
whatever pathways, whatever is truth and life for me –
there is Christ, my way, my truth, my life.

A number of the Easter stories
are centred on the recognition of Christ.
Where once only emptiness was,
comes the recognition of Jesus
as friend and companion on the journey, and as Lord.
Let us hope to grow in our trust
and through that in our recognition of God
in our after-Easter time.

]]>https://unfamiliarname.wordpress.com/2011/05/22/homily-for-easter-5a/feed/0Fr Tim HurdHomily for Easter 4Ahttps://unfamiliarname.wordpress.com/2011/05/15/homily-for-easter-4a/
https://unfamiliarname.wordpress.com/2011/05/15/homily-for-easter-4a/#respondSun, 15 May 2011 10:13:35 +0000http://unfamiliarname.wordpress.com/?p=383]]>There’s a famous brain teaser.
It involves two doors, identical,
guarded by two gatekeepers.
One leads to heaven, one leads to hell.
You can ask only one question
to one gatekeeper about this situation
before deciding which door you will take.
The gatekeeper for heaven only tells the truth.
The other, only lies.

What one question do you ask?

Lest you spend the next few minutes
absorbed only in that puzzle,
I’ll tell you the answer:
you ask either gatekeeper what the other would say.
And that answer actually identifies their own door.

You have to be pretty bright
to get to that answer without help.
And our passages of Scripture today
don’t put great faith in our intellect
or in our common sense.
Because we are sheep.“The Lord is my shepherd” kind-of means “I am a sheep”.
Perhaps a little stroppy, but often quite dim,
dependent, and easily led, if not fleeced fro time to time.
[Note: I am told that I have unfairly besmirched the reputation of ovine intelligence, for which I unreservedly apologise to any sheep who may be reading.]

In this morning’s gospel,
Jesus speaks of himself in two ways:
as the shepherd of the sheep – the theme we have
every Fourth Sunday of the Easter season –
but also in John’s Gospel as the gate.

In one of those key “I am” statements we find in John,
Jesus says “I am the gate for the sheep”.

I wonder what he means?

Those who first heard these sayings
obviously struggled with them,
which may mean we need to do a bit of work here, too.

“I am the gate”.

The gate is question, in Jesus’ farming world,
is one of protection.
It keeps the sheep safe.
The shepherd himself sleeps
over the only entrance to the enclosure
where the sheep are corralled for the night.
If a predator or a rustler wants to get in,
or a dopey sheep wants to wander away,
it’s literally over the shepherd’s body.

The gate is about protection, and belonging,
not some sort of imprisonment.
This gate allows those within and without
who belong to the flock to come and go
in safety to find rest and pasture.

Back to our opening teaser.
We know about (often self-appointed) gatekeepers.Our Gospel isn’t speaking about our role to keep the gate.
Those who would take on that role are challenged, if Christ is the gate.We are not called to lock people in or out.
To say who gets in or who stays out,
if Christ is the gate.
We simply have no right, no role like that,
if Christ is the gate.
Jesus calls his sheep, and they follow him.
It takes a pretty stubborn, strange kind of sheep
to choose to stay apart from the flock
going out to find pasture.
Or a creature very afraid.

Afraid of the possibility of life
and nourishment outside the walls of security.
Afraid even of the shepherd, the gate.
Afraid of having life and having it abundantly.

If that is us,
then what would it take for us
to be assured, comforted, calmed?
What might we discover in this Easter season
about not letting our lives be ruled by fear?

Love conquers fear.
Casts it out.

The God who in Jesus Christ has sought us out,
who calls us by name,
does so because of the Love that is God.
We can trust that.
We can trust
that the promise of abundant life is made to us.
Now.
Not a life where we are never hurt or unhappy,
but the fullness of our existence
– here, in this place and with these people,
and with the promise
of our being in God’s presence beyond time and space.

“I am the gate” says Jesus.
But I’m not sure that’s a message of exclusion
in the way some Christians would have it.

There is no other who choses who comes and who goes.

No place here for those of us who would be gatekeepers.

Which both affirms the uniqueness of Christ
in our theology,
and challenges any presuppositions we might have
about who will be able to enter and be saved.

Even the Church with a capital “C”
doesn’t get to play gatekeeper here.
The allegory of the Easter tomb,
with its stone rolled away,
the guards powerless to keep the Risen Christ within
or the women and other witnesses out,
takes away any sense of the power of the gatekeeper.

Takes away the power of what in other metaphors
we might describe as the one great gate, death itself.

Christ’s victory over death brings life, and abundant life,
not the judgement and annihilation we expect.

Jesus claims the power
we would give to and we fear in our own dying.
Jesus has not only entered there,
but has assured us that our death is not the thief we fear,
who steals and kills and destroys.
Christ, risen from the dead, is the gate –
even when we stand at the portal of death.

In Christ we will enter – and can touch already –
life in its abundance.
That is our Good News,
and nobody and nothing can take that away from us.